I've stopped counting the books
May. 9th, 2009 07:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slowfoxLast year I managed to read 92 books, all told. I was keeping a tally this year, too, but have decided to stop doing so, because it was turning into a competition, and that shouldn't be the driver in terms of why I read.
In similar vein, I cleared out the bookshelves at Castle Fox a while back, and got rid of several hundred books by donating them to charity (Oxfam in the town centre were sorta overwhelmed, and would, at least for a short while, have had a Titanic library to rival many). The reason for this was because I had a dark suspicion that the only real purpose most of the books had been serving was to sit on the shelves and crow 'Look! See us? We've all been read, we have...'
Obviously, some books I've kept - the World Press Photo annuals (must pick up this year's), reference books and the various series that I know I'll re-read (HP, Alex Rider, Liveships, Saga of the Exiles, Lord of the Rings and so on). That wasn't as easy as it might sound, and some tomes were disproportionately agonised over, but with the exception of one book (Peter Hamilton's The Reality Disfunction, which I did get an urge to re-read over Christmas), I seem to have struck the right balance.
Currently reading Stephen King's The Stand - it's the first of his novels that I've tried, actually, and whilst I'm liking the post-apocalyptic stuff, I'm not wholly sold on the good/evil thing.
In similar vein, I cleared out the bookshelves at Castle Fox a while back, and got rid of several hundred books by donating them to charity (Oxfam in the town centre were sorta overwhelmed, and would, at least for a short while, have had a Titanic library to rival many). The reason for this was because I had a dark suspicion that the only real purpose most of the books had been serving was to sit on the shelves and crow 'Look! See us? We've all been read, we have...'
Obviously, some books I've kept - the World Press Photo annuals (must pick up this year's), reference books and the various series that I know I'll re-read (HP, Alex Rider, Liveships, Saga of the Exiles, Lord of the Rings and so on). That wasn't as easy as it might sound, and some tomes were disproportionately agonised over, but with the exception of one book (Peter Hamilton's The Reality Disfunction, which I did get an urge to re-read over Christmas), I seem to have struck the right balance.
Currently reading Stephen King's The Stand - it's the first of his novels that I've tried, actually, and whilst I'm liking the post-apocalyptic stuff, I'm not wholly sold on the good/evil thing.
